Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard said on Monday that seven of its members were killed in an airstrike that hit Iran’s consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Syrian officials and state media blamed Israel, which declined to comment.

The strike on Iran’s embassy compound appears to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of Iranian military officials and their allies in Syria, which have intensified since Hamas militants, who are supported by Iran, attacked Israel on October 7.

The Iranian Arabic-language state television Al-Alam and pan-Arab television station Al-Mayadeen, which has reporters in Syria, said the strike killed Iranian military adviser General Ali Reza Zahdi, who led the elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016.

Iranian ambassador Hossein Akbari condemned Israel and said as many as seven people were killed, but emergency services were still searching for any other bodies under the rubble.

He said two police officers who guard the building were wounded.

Akbari vowed revenge for the strike “at the same magnitude and harshness”.

After meeting Akbari, Syrian foreign minister Faisal Mekdad said “several” people were killed.

Mekdad, in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, condemned Israel.

Iranian state television said the Iranian ambassador’s residence was in the consular building, which stood next to the embassy.

State news agency Sana, citing an unnamed military source, said the building in the tightly guarded neighbourhood of Mazzeh was levelled.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years.

Such airstrikes have escalated in recent months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and ongoing clashes between Israel’s military and Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Though it rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, Israel has said it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighbourhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi.

A similar strike on a building in Damascus in January killed at least five Iranian advisers.

Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.